PDFs won't open since Catalina

OK. Same issue here I think... Recently I noticed all PDF file icons were defaulting to to Affinity Photo. I used "Get info" on one PDF file and used the "Open with" to reassign to Preview by default, and then hit "Change all". PDF file icons started showing up as Preview again, but trying to open any PDF resulted in Preview getting focus, then a few seconds of nothing, followed by Finder animating the file icon as if it was opening, then nothing... not even an error. Restarted. Nothing. Did some disk first aid, nothing. Hitting space for a quick preview of a PDF worked fine, reassigning PDF's to another app worked fine, reassigning back to Preview and nothing. Opening other image formats in Preview worked fine (jpg, png), opening PDF's in other apps worked fine. I did some of the suggestions listed here, deleting Preview preferences and also the Preview Container directory, logged out and back in again and still no improvement. I created a new test user and logged in – PDFs opened fine in Preview there! Hmmm... It felt like a securities/permission type bug so logged back into my own account (PDF's still failed to open in Preview) and followed https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT203538 Initially after following the steps and logging out and back in, still no luck. I gave up at this point, and tried to get on with some work. About an hour later I had to restart as a couple of apps were now unexpectedly starting giving the pinwheel of death opening files. After the restart, PDF's were opening again in Preview! I'm going to assume the guidance to "Reset permissions" procedure in Finder followed by a:

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

...may have done the trick, and just required a full restart and not just a logout and login again, however at some point in desperation I did also try a:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

...so can't be 100% as to what the fix may have been. Good luck!

I'm having the same issue. Can't open any PDFs in either Preview or Acrobat.

Acrobat: Adobe Acrobat Reader could not open 'filename.pdf' because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded).

Preview: The file “filename.pdf” could not be opened. It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize.

I think there may be a problem with the Preview app. I posted a problem I am having with Preview opening PDFs only a week or so ago with no solution. I have reported this to Apple but don't suppose I will hear.

My post is here; https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250719196

These PDFs, some are quite large refuse to open in Preview but will, by using Adobe Acrobat Reader (Ver. 19.012.20040).They open almost immediately in Adobe but I much prefer the design & layout of Preview to Adobe.

I had exactly same problem. Could not open PDF or JPEG or PNG in my Home Folder. Items in my download folder or synched to my iCloud Drive opened correctly.

Solution - I had to reset permission in my Home folder.

Follow these Apple Support Instructions. Success !!!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

I had success following these Apple Directions to correct the Home Folder (Desktop) Permissions for all documents including PDF files which got wiped out by Catalina:   https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203538

However,

The System Preference > Security And Privacy > General tab > "RequirePassword X Hours after sleep or screen saver begins" forces me to reboot my computer 100% of the time when this system setting forces a logout. Very Annoying.

Terry

In my own words: (MacBook Pro Retina late 2012, OS Catalina)

• Unable to open any PDF files via Preview for a few weeks now (error message: Unable to open File or Document).
• Premise: since installing Dropbox on my Mac a few weeks ago, for some reason I keep choosing "not now" whenever prompted to allow Dropbox to access files my computer.
• Tried to install a PDF app, but to no avail.
• Today at some point I was asked again to allow or deny Dropbox to access my computer and decided to give it permission and guess what?
• Problem resolved.

I can open PDF's but can't modify them and save them. Every time I try to save a file that is modified it says "The document “name of document” could not be saved as “name of document”.  I'm not sure what the problem is but it started once I updated to Catalina on my iMac. I've got a MacBook Pro as well and before I updated it to Catalina it had no issues with PDF's but now I'm dealing with the same issues as the iMac is having.

Here's a screenshot.

peter_watt, my Mac is about as out-of-the-box as it gets. The "upgrade to Catalina" took the form of buying a new MacBook Pro 16" (late 2019) and applying all software updates. As a general rule, I do not install third-party apps, but rely on Apple software or Web apps for all my needs.

Have you tried Adobe Reader (free) to see if it will open the PDFs? I use Acrobat Pro and it opens the PDFs fine (after Catalina). If Adobe Reader opens them, then it may indicate an issue with Preview reading PDFs.

Get Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) and see if it will work. I had Adobe Acrobat Pro but it started having issues when I went to Mojave so went with Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (the subscription version) and i love it...and, issues with Catalina (at least for me) BTW, with the DC version you can edit PDFs, convert PDFs to Word or Excel docs.

Os it possible to upload one such file (one without any personal or sensitive information, of course) to some place online and post a link, so we can test whether or not the file is corrupted? It seems unlikely that a lot of files got corrupted, and my guess is that this is caused by some software conflict.

Also, try booting in Safe Mode. Do these same files open in Safe Mode?

I have had a similar experience. I regularly need to open password-protected PDFs, and Preview would not let me open one despite trying the password a couple of times. It would just sit at the password entry. I ended up downloading Acrobat Reader to get around the issue.

mdebernardi...when you "Get Info" on a PDF (i.e., ⌘Command + I) you notice about ⅔ down, "Open with..." and a dropdown menu. (see my screenshot below). What is your's set to as default? When you click on the dropdown, you will see the choices you have and Preview should be one of the choices. Make sure it is set to Preview.

Preview works on my Catalina but I use Adobe Acrobat Pro and I set my default to Acrobat.

I hope this works for you.

I have same issue, and tried to set as default via 'get info' menu, but still wont open my pdf file..

i like preview app to open, drag and drop to merge my pdf, because its more light and bit faster than any other pdf app :(

i hope apple fix this issue..